Stonewall Inn

In the early hours of June 28, 1969, patrons of a small Greenwich Village bar fought back against a police raid, and the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement was born. The Stonewall Inn had been one of the few places gay, lesbian, and transgender New Yorkers could gather openly in an era when doing so was routinely criminalized. The riots that followed over the next several nights galvanized a generation of activism, and a year later the first Pride marches commemorated the uprising — a tradition now observed worldwide every June.

The building at 51-53 Christopher Street dates to the 1840s-30s and became the Stonewall Inn in 1930; by 1967 it was operating as a mafia-run gay bar, one of the few venues in New York where LGBTQ+ people could dance and socialize together, though it had no liquor license and was subject to frequent police raids. Such raids were common under laws that criminalized homosexuality and cross-dressing.

When police raided the bar in the early morning of June 28, 1969, patrons and neighborhood residents — including prominent figures like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera — resisted arrest instead of dispersing. A crowd gathered, bottles and stones were thrown, and skirmishes with police continued intermittently for six days, drawing thousands of participants and onlookers to Christopher Street.

The uprising catalyzed new activist organizations, including the Gay Liberation Front, formed within weeks. On the first anniversary, June 28, 1970, activists organized Christopher Street Liberation Day marches in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago — the first Pride marches, which have since spread to cities worldwide. In 2016 President Obama designated the Stonewall National Monument, the first National Park Service unit dedicated to LGBTQ+ history.